【medical-news】儿童多大才学会和他人分享呢？

Children Learn to Share by Age 7 or 8——Selfishness of Younger Kids Gives Way to a More Egalitarian Viewpoint

Aug. 27, 2008 -- Three- and 4-year-olds are selfish and not likely to share -- hardly news to any parent who has presided over a toddler play date. The good news is children do develop altruism and the desire for things to be fair by the time they are 7 or 8, according to a Swiss study.

The study, led by Ernst Fehr at the University of Zurich and published in Nature, is based on research done with 229 Swiss children. The study delves deeply into when children learn to share, at what age equality becomes important to them, whether they are more willing to share with kids they know than with strangers, and how birth order affects a child's willingness to share.

For the study, children were offered candy and choices in several scenarios.

In a scenario called the sharing treatment, the child was offered two choices. Choice No. 1: one piece of candy for himself or herself and one piece of candy for another child. Choice No. 2: two pieces for himself or herself, and nothing for the other child.

At age 3 and 4, only 8.7% of children in the sharing treatment chose to give another child they knew one of the pieces of candy. By age 7 and 8, 45% of children chose to share one of the candies. In general, older children chose more consistently egalitarian outcomes in all the scenarios, according to researchers. They were more likely to want everything to be fair.

For instance, in a scenario called the envy treatment, when the child could choose one for himself and one for his partner or one for himself and two for his partner, the older child was more likely to decide everyone should get just one candy.

The study also says that as children become more egalitarian, they also become more parochial. In some cases, the children were paired with kids from their schools, while sometimes they were paired with kids they did not know. At all ages, children were more likely to share with children they knew, but that tendency increased with age.

Researchers also sliced and diced their data by birth order. Children who didn't have siblings were more likely to share than children with siblings. The least likely to share? Youngest children.

The researchers argue that studying the development of egalitarianism and parochialism -- and their possible connection -- is important to understanding the evolution of humans. "These results indicate that human egalitarianism and parochialism have deep developmental roots, and the simultaneous emergence of altruistic sharing and parochialism during childhood is intriguing in view of recent evolutionary theories which predict that the same evolutionary process jointly drives both human altruism and parochialism," the researchers write.

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Children Learn to Share by Age 7 or 8——Selfishness of Younger Kids Gives Way to a More Egalitarian Viewpoint儿童7至8岁学会与人分享----儿童的自私逐渐被平等的意识取代

Aug. 27, 2008 -- Three- and 4-year-olds are selfish and not likely to share -- hardly news to any parent who has presided over a toddler play date. The good news is children do develop altruism and the desire for things to be fair by the time they are 7 or 8, according to a Swiss study.2008.8.27---三、四岁的孩子自私期且不喜欢与人分享，这对于那些拥有一个正蹒跚学步、嬉戏玩耍的小孩的父母来说几乎无一例外。不过有个好消息，据一位瑞士学者的研究发现，孩子到7、8岁的时候会逐渐变得无私，并且期望与他人一起分享。

The study, led by Ernst Fehr at the University of Zurich and published in Nature, is based on research done with 229 Swiss children. The study delves deeply into when children learn to share, at what age equality becomes important to them, whether they are more willing to share with kids they know than with strangers, and how birth order affects a child's willingness to share.苏黎世大学的恩斯特·费尔对229名瑞士儿童进行了研究，其研究成果发表在《Nature》上。这个课题深入地探究了儿童从什么时候学会与人分享？从什么时候起平等的观念对他们来说变得比较重要？与陌生人相比他们是不是更愿意与自己认识的小伙伴分享？小孩的年龄大小是否会影响他们与别人分享的意愿？

For the study, children were offered candy and choices in several scenarios.